Fürcht' dich nicht, du liebes Kindchen,
Vor der bösen Geister Macht;
Tag und Nacht, du liebes Kindchen,
Halten Engel bei dir Wacht.--HEINE.
Once, on a warm moonlight night in September, Storm and I took a walk
in the Park. The night always tuned him into a gentle mood, and I even
suspect that he had some sentiment about it. The currents of life, he
said, then ran more serenely, with a slower and healthier pulse-beat;
the unfathomable mysteries of life crowded in upon us; our shallow
individualities were quenched, and our larger human traits rose nearer
to the surface. The best test of sympathy was a night walk; two
persons who then jarred upon each other might safely conclude that
they were constitutionally unsympathetic. He had known silly girls who
in moonlight were sublime; but it was dangerous to build one's hopes
of happiness upon this moonlight sublimity. Just as all complexions,
except positive black, were fair when touched by the radiance of the
night, so all shades of character, except downright wickedness,
borrowed a finer human tinge under this illusory illumination. Thus
ran his talk, I throwing in the necessary expletives, and as I am
neither black nor absolutely wicked, I have reason to believe that I
appeared to good advantage.
"It is very curious about women," he broke forth after a long
meditative pause. "In spite of all my pondering on the subject, I
never quite could understand the secret of their fascination. Their
goodness, if they are good, is usually of the quality of oatmeal, and
when they are bad--"
"'They are horrid,'" I quoted promptly.
"Amen," he added with a contented chuckle. "I never could see the
appropriateness of the Bible precept about coveting your neighbor's
wife," he resumed after another brief silence. "I, for my part, never
found my neighbor's wife worth coveting. But I will admit that I have,
in a few instances, felt inclined to covet my neighbor's child. No
amount of pessimism can quite fortify a man against the desire to have
children. A child is not always a 'thing of beauty,' nor is it apt to
be a 'joy for ever'; but I never yet met the man who would not be
willing to take his chances. It is a confounded thing that the
paternal instinct is so deeply implanted, even in such a piece of
dried-up parchment as myself. It is like discovering a warm, live vein
of throbbing blood under the shrivelled skin of an Egyptian mummy."
We sauntered on for more than an hour, now plunging into dense masses
of shadow, now again emerging into cool pathways of light. The
conversation turned on various topics, all of which Storm touched with
a kindlier humor than was his wont. The world was a failure, but for
all that, it was the part of a wise man to make the best of it as it
was. The clock in some neighboring tower struck ten; we took a
street-car and rode home. As we were about to alight (I first, and
Storm following closely after me), I noticed a woman with a wild,
frightened face hurrying away from the street-lamp right in front of
us. My friend, owing either to his near-sightedness, or his
preoccupation, had evidently not observed her. We climbed the long
dimly lighted stairs to his room, and both stumbled at the door
against a large basket.
"That detestable washwoman!" he muttered. "How often have I told her
not to place her basket where everybody is sure to run into it!"
He opened the door and I carried the basket into the room, while he
struck a match and lighted the drop-light on the table.
"Excuse me for a moment," he went on, stooping to lift the cloth which
covered the basket. "I want to count--Gracious heavens! what is this?"
he cried suddenly, springing up as if he had stepped on something
alive; then he sank down into an arm-chair, and sat staring vacantly
before him. In the basket lay a sleeping infant, apparently about
eight months old. As soon as I had recovered from my first
astonishment, I bent down over it and regarded it attentively. It was
a beautiful, healthy-looking child,--not a mere formless mass of fat
with hastily sketched features, as babes of that age are apt to be.
Its face was of exquisite finish, a straight, well-modelled little
nose, a softly defined dimpled little chin, and a fresh, finely curved
mouth, through which the even breath came and went with a quiet,
hardly perceptible rhythm. It was all as sweet, harmonious, and
artistically perfect as a Tennysonian stanza. The little waif won my
heart at once, and it was a severe test of my self-denial that I had
to repress my desire to kiss it. I somehow felt that my friend ought
to be the first to recognize it as a member of his household.
"Storm," I said, looking up at his pale, vacant face. "It is a
dangerous thing to covet one's neighbor's child. But, if you don't
adopt this little dumb supplicant, I fear you will tempt me to break
the tenth commandment. I believe there is a clause there about
coveting children."
Storm opened his eyes wide, and with an effort to rouse himself,
pushed back the chair and knelt down at the side of the basket. With a
gentle movement he drew off the cover under which the child slept, and
discovered on its bosom a letter which he eagerly seized. As he
glanced at the direction of the envelope, his face underwent a
marvellous change; it was as if a mask had suddenly been removed,
revealing a new type of warmer, purer, and tenderer manhood.
The letter read as follows:
"DEAREST EDMUND:
It has gone all wrong with me. You know I would not come to if there
was any other hope left. As for myself, I do not care what becomes
of me, but you will not forsake my little girl. Will you dear
Edmund? I know you will not. I promise you, I shall never claim her
back. She shall be yours always. Her name is Ragna; she was born
February 25th, and was christened two months later. I have prayed to
God that she may bring happiness into your life, that she may
expiate the wrong her mother did you.
I was not married until five years after you left me. It is a great
sin to say it, but I always hoped that you would come back to me I
did not know then how great my wrong was. Now I know it and I have
ceased to hope. Do not try to find me. It will be useless. I shall
never willingly cross your path, dear Edmund. I have learned that
happiness never comes where I am; and I would not darken your life
again,--no I would not, so help me God! Only forgive me, if you can,
and do not say anything bad about me to my child--ah! what a
horrible thought! I did not mean to ask you that, because I know how
good you are. I am so wild with strange thoughts, so dazed and
bewildered that I do not know what I am saying. Farewell, dear
Edmund.--Your, EMILY.
If you should decide not to keep my little girl (as I do not think
you will), send a line addressed E.H.H., to the personal column in
the 'N.Y. Herald.' But do not try to find me. I shall answer you in
the same way and tell you where to send the child. E.H."
This letter was not shown to me until several years after, but even
then the half illegible words, evidently traced with a trembling hand,
the pathetic abruptness of the sentences, sounding like the
grief-stricken cries of a living voice, and the still visible marks
of tears upon the paper, made an impression upon me which is not
easily forgotten.
In the meanwhile Storm, having read and reread the letter, was lifting
his strangely illumined eyes to the ceiling.
"God be praised," he said in a trembling whisper. "I have wronged her,
too, and I did not know it. I will be a father to her child."
The little girl, who had awaked, without signalling the fact in the
usual manner, fixed her large, fawn-like eyes upon him in peaceful
wonder. He knelt down once more, took her in his arms, and kissed her
gravely and solemnly. It was charming to see with what tender
awkwardness he held her, as if she were some precious thing made of
frail stuff that might easily be broken. My curiosity had already
prompted me to examine the basket, which contained a variety of clean,
tiny articles,--linen, stockings, a rattle with the distinct impress
of its nationality, and several neatly folded dresses, among which a
long, white, elaborately embroidered one, marked by a slip of paper as
"Baby's Christening Robe."
I will not reproduce the long and serious consultation which followed;
be it sufficient to chronicle the result. I hastened homeward, and had
my landlady, Mrs. Harrison, roused from her midnight slumbers; she
was, as I knew, a woman of strong maternal instincts, who was fond of
referring to her experience in that line,--a woman to whom your
thought would naturally revert in embarrassing circumstances. She
responded promptly and eagerly to my appeal; the situation evidently
roused all the latent romance of her nature, and afforded her no small
satisfaction. She spent a half hour in privacy with the baby, who
re-appeared fresh and beaming in a sort of sacerdotal Norse
night-habit which was a miracle of neatness.
"Bless her little heart," ejaculated Mrs. Harrison, as the small fat
hands persisted in pulling her already demoralized side curls. "She
certainly knows me;" then in an aside to Storm: "The mother, whoever
she may be, sir, is a lady. I never seed finer linen as long as I
lived; and every single blessed piece is embroidered with two letters
which I reckon means the name of the child."
Storm bowed his head silently and sighed. But when the baby, after
having rather indifferently submitted to a caress from me, stretched
out its arms to him and consented with great good humor to a final
good-night kiss, large tears rolled down over his cheeks, while he
smiled, as I thought only the angels could smile.
I am obliged to add before the curtain is dropped upon this nocturnal
drama, that my friend was guilty of an astonishing piece of Vandalism.
When my landlady had deposited the sleeping child in his large,
exquisitely carved and canopied bed (which, as he declared, made him
feel as if a hundred departed grandees were his bed-fellows), we both
went in to have a final view of our little foundling. As we stood
there, clasping each other's hands in silence, Storm suddenly fixed
his eyes with a savage glare upon one of the bed-posts which contained
a tile of porcelain, representing Joseph leaving his garment in the
hand of Potiphar's wife; on the post opposite was seen Samson sheared
of his glory and Delilah fleeing through the opened door with his
seven locks in her hand; a third represented Jezebel being
precipitated from a third-story window, and the subject of the fourth
I have forgotten. It was a remnant of the not always delicate humor of
the seventeenth century. My friend, with a fierce disgust, strangely
out of keeping with his former mood, pulled a knife from his pocket,
and deliberately proceeded to demolish the precious tiles. When he had
succeeded in breaking out the last, he turned to me and said:
"I have been an atrocious fool. It is high time I should get to know
it."
A week later I found four new tiles with designs of Fra Angelico's
angels installed in the places of the reprobate Biblical women.